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Dan's hobby/obsession

Workouts and musings from a recovering CPA who returned to swimming after a 20 year absence (Div III, Claremont/Mudd/Scripps--Claremont, CA) and picked up a couple other sports in the process and became a summertime triathlete & a wintertime swimmer.

I swim mostly on my own, but occasionally practice with the Monroe Y Masters team. Many workouts are lifted from other websites, though I have started designing my own workouts recently and welcome suggestions.

I'm looking forward to a fun winter swim season before shifting gears (again) to running and triathlons in the spring and summer. This summer I will be participating in Ironman Canada and need to devote some time to cycling to pull it off successfully!

I've been focusing on getting pool time for the past couple of weeks. A bit of a knee injury has kept me from running, so I've put a bit extra time into swimming and I feel like I'm starting to get back into swim shape.

Today many of my training buddies started their 36 week training plan for Ironman Canada. I've got a bit of ADHD when it comes to competition, so I decided not to join them on a 36 week single-event plan.

But I did decide to acknowledge the beginning of their journey by putting together a double-ironman distance swim workout (my math was off so I ended up being 200yds short, oops)

I was pretty happy with this effort. The yardage was bordering on "garbage," but I think I kept the pace fast enough to call this a quality workout. I've managed a few sets of 100s at 1:15 and am hoping to take a shot at 1:10 either this week or next - sticking with my strategy of gaining speed through strength instead of flailing.

Wow - It's been a while since I added anything here. I probably don't have anything more worthwhile to post than I did before, but I feel like updating, so here goes:

Since June, I've run an additional 3 marathons, an Olympic triathlon, and a Half Ironman triathlon. I also participated in numerous half marathons, a 5k run (19:21 woot!) and the Ragnar Relay - Northwest Passage (our team took 2nd overall!) I also registered for Ironman Canada in 2012.

With all that running & cycling, my swimming has fallen off considerably. My YTD swim total is just shy of 325 miles and I'm nowhere near race-ready. I did enter a swim meet a couple weeks ago, but I mostly swam short "off" events. I think I split a low 27 for a relay 50fr(SCM), so I've got some work to do.

This week I've started getting more serious about swimming, so I dug out the old workout cards and started cruising the NTC workouts. Sadly, I am coming off a sinus infection and possibly viral pneumonia (a close friend of mine has it & my chest is feeling tight) so the workouts haven't been as strong as I had hoped, but I was feeling progressively stronger over the course of the week and have high hopes for next week.
Today's workout:
This week's workouts started out with a ladder on Monday, 300's on Tuesday, 200's on Wed, and a Turkey burn workout/party on Thurs. Today I decided to continue the trend and go with 100's and, in spite of my chest issues, wanted to try them at mid-season pace.
Warm Up
400 swim (every 4th length backstroke)
300 pull (every 4th length sculling)
200 kick
200 IM drill
8x50 kick @ 1:00 2x(3fr, 1 fly)
Main
8x100 swim - 4 @ 1:30, 4 @ 1:20
8x100 IM - 4 @ 1:45, 4 @ 1:35 (I felt the chest tightness on these last 4!)
8x100 pull - 4 @ 1:25, 4 @ 1:20
8x100 swim - 4 @ 1:25, 4 @ 1:20 (shoot, I was hoping to hit 1:15 - maybe next week!)

200 cool down

4,900 yds

Overall, I was happy with today's swim. I hope to get my tempo up next week and will start adding sprints to the workout mix. Less than 2 months to the next meet, gotta get my sprint on!

I've been swimming 3-4 times a week to keep my stroke, but falling quite a bit off the pace needed to hit 1,000,000yds by 12/31/11. I'm sure I don't sprint for beans anymore.

But my main focus for the past few weeks has been prepping for the dreaded marathon. I'm happy to say that's over, but I still don't have any decent swim events planned for quite a while, so I'll probably keep slacking in the water.

As far as the marathon goes. I finished with a 3:24:49 which was a good run and, I found out this morning, is a Boston Marathon qualifying time because I have a birthday that moved my Q time from 3:20 to 3:30.

So now I get to choose between Boston & Greensboro next spring. (or neither and catch a plane to Hawaii with the family during spring break)

I was semi-happy with the 400, but the rest of it was just going through the motions. I just didn't have the guns to hit the 50's and 100's the way I should have. Oh well. These things happen.

On the plus side - Tuesday was one of those rare sunny days so I dusted off my bike again and went for a 30 mile ride. I spent a lot of time climbing hills - slowly- but it was nice to get back outside on the bike. After I got home I noticed that today was the day that I broke 200 miles swimming for the year and 100 miles cycling.

Wednesday morning the rain came back. So did the cold weather. My joints really felt the change in weather this morning. Arghh. I finally got moving though and headed out for a 10 mile run. It wasn't pouring rain, so it wasn't totally awful, but I wasn't having a great time between the poor weather and the blisters I got during the Monday run.

Well, I've given this "blogging" a shot. This was my first attempt at it and I thought it might be an additional motivational tool or a way to be less of a passive member of the website. Well, it's been a few weeks and it turns out that I really don't have much to say and I think I was pretty motivated before this experiment. So I think I'm going to return to my "lurker" status and leave the blogging to the more interesting and talented folks.

The pool is always such a busy place over the weekend that I almost never bother to go anymore. So Monday becomes my "Welcome back" workout which typically means that I need to spend quite a bit of time doing sets that loosen up my shoulders/back so I can get some work done later in the week.

So, although today's workout did have a purpose, I'd say most of this is "garbage yards"

And the non-swimming portion of today's workout included 3hrs of trail running at the Redmond Watershed. I can't say that I know how far we ran because my Garmin was not acquiring a signal and I got tired of waiting for it, so today was a day for running "naked."

It's a great place to run and the weather was just about perfect. We saw several deer and the flowers are finally starting to bloom in the forest.

I woke up early this morning & drove out to Monroe to do a little "fun Friday" workout with the masters team. I must've missed a memo, because only a half-dozen folks showed up so the coach put a pretty good workout on the board.
Solo Warm Up:
500 swim - every 4th length backstroke
6x50 Kick @ 1:00 alt. fr/fly/fr/br

I was feeling pretty good on the negative split 150's. I had some nice smooth speed going during the first 75 and built from there. I thought I might end up cruising to about 1:50-1:55, so the mid 1:40's was a nice surprise.

The 'fast' 200's still aren't where I'd like them to be, but as I've mentioned to my teammates, I could've gone 2:10's and been talking about how I would've liked to go 2:05's. I'm happy with my progress - a couple months ago I was fighting to hit 2:20's.

I'm getting a chuckle out of my Speedo Endurance Jammers. The fabric is holding up very well, but the thread has gotten completely eaten away by the chlorine. They are literally falling apart at the seams. But I'm happy to say that I've had this pair for almost a year which is about twice as long as I've had any other pair of jammers. I'll keep wearing them as a drag suit for a while, too.

Updated May 6th, 2011 at 01:01 PM bylarsoda(missed using the work "kick" in a couple places...)

I got a peek at jaadams1's workout this morning and wanted to give it a go, but I just couldn't squeeze a trip to the pool into the schedule today.

Why couldn't I fit a swim in? Because today the marathon training took priority.

Today was a 9 1/2 mile trail run at the Redmond Watershed that a friend recommended to me. I carpooled with her to the trailhead and she led me through the woods for 80 minutes. She's an outstanding runner and by the end she was pulling away and I was a little afeared of getting lost in the woods.

Marathon/schmarathon -- I felt like swimming some 200's today and working on some breaststroke. I guess it's reading all the reports from Nationals - I'm finding it very difficult to transition to low-yardage workouts to just maintain my stroke.

Main sets:
10x25 @ :30 alt. back/breast
3x50 @ 1:00 ba, br, free
3x200 @ 2:40 (2:20 - 2:25)
8x25 @ :30 alt. back/breast
4x50 @ 1:00 alt back/ breast
3x200 @ 2:30 (2:20 - 2:25)
6x25 @ :30 alt. back/ breast
5x50 @ 1:00 back/breast/back/breast/free
200 for time - 2:13 .... Yep, I broke the pattern. I was going to take a shot at 2:20's, but after dragging myself to the wall at the end of the last round, I decided I'd just try to swim a strong 200 to end the day. Although it wasn't as fast as I had hoped, I felt strong and was able to finish with a good kick.

Sad to say, but the gas bill is starting to affect my choice of workout venue. I typically drive about 17miles to swim with the Monroe Y Masters on T/Th and sometimes Fri, but with gas near $4/gal. I've got to cut back on the driving a bit. So I decided to pop in with the new team that works out about a mile from my home. The proximity is great, but it is a new team and there are only a couple former swimmers there.

I'm a bit ambivalent about this workout. There was some variety, but the sets were so short that I never really got dialed in on anything. With the slower intervals, I figured I should ratchet up my intensity level a bit. 85-90% RPE, not sprinting, but breathing semi-hard at the end of each 100.

I also added on the 4x100IM at the end to round out the day. They felt OK, but I've still got a lot of work to do on breaststroke if I'm ever going to be "competitive" in the IM.

With any luck, the rain will let up some time this afternoon & I'll get in a few miles running. 33 days until the marathon, so I've got to log a bunch of miles in the next couple of weeks.

Well, not a totally swimless weekend. I spent some time looking over the meet results and wishing I was further along with my training so I could have been there in the warm/hot sunshine. Congratulations on some great swims!

This morning's workout was a pretty low-key workout. I think it might be called a 'meat & potatoes' workout by some.

I followed this workout with a run in the rain with a triathlon coach I met after swim practice a few months ago. We ran a combination of road & trails that came to just over 10 miles in about 1hr 20 minutes. My first decent run since last week's bout with the flu.

Over the weekend I managed to run 3.4 miles on Saturday and 5 miles on Sunday. We had some good weather (Great - for those of us near Seattle) 60's & sunshine, so I dusted off the Roubaix and hit the road for 30miles. It was good to get on the bike again, but I learned that swimming may keep me aerobically fit, but it does nothing for my ability to pedal the bike up the hills. (duh)

I headed into my marathon training pretty well on Saturday. I got up early to run at 5:30 with a local running club and put in 10 miles before stopping at the coffee shop to meet up with a few of the guys that I'm running the Ragnar Relay with at the end of July. My plan was to run another 6 miles with them, but I misread the e-mail blast & ended up running another 10miles. An excellent, albeit unplanned, marathon training day!

Sunday was Easter and I took a day off from training. Unfortunately, late in the day I was suffering from a horrible case of stomach flu. The drive home from the in-laws was not pleasant and from Sunday night to Tuesday mid-day I was pretty much semi-conscious.

I started feeling semi-human again Wednesday and risked a trip to the pool. I decided not to push my luck & just did 2 rounds of 500yds swim/kick/pull and 200yds cool down along with a few attempts at the "how far can you glide?" challenge. (12.5yds )

Thursday was a little better. I decided to get up early and work out with a new masters team that formed nearby a couple months ago. I knew it would be a low-key workout and that seemed just fine.

I think my "off season" strategy is to focus on improving my non-freestyle swimming. Although I'm planning on swimming several Open Water races this summer, I think I'm going to do more good for next winter by improving my breaststroke and refining by backstroke technique. Of course, getting some butterfly endurance might not hurt, either.

My running plan has been neglected this week. Although I felt well enough to swim, when I finish, my legs are still quite weak and I am reluctant to head out for a run only to turn around after 1/4 mile. This afternoon I'll take a chance on running again, though.

I think the impingement has finally worked itself out! My arms feel pretty good and I was able to swim comfortably today.

I'm still struggling with my "off season" mentality. I'm having trouble bringing the sense of purpose and intensity to practice because I don't have any racing goals for the next several months. I think I had 3 months where I'd look through my 3x5 cards and find workouts that fit what I wanted to focus on for that day. Now it feels like the GTD miles are driving most of my workout decisions -- BTW, I'm back in the top 10 for my AG.

I started running through different ideas for sets on the drive to the pool and decided I wanted some variety and a decent number of yards. Here's what I came up with:

Probably more of a hypoxic set than a kick set. I made the 1st one no-breath and then started taking a breath at the far flags. I got a little disgusted with myself for that & worked back up to no-breath on the last one. I'll keep working on this.

I didn't really push this - :10 to :15 sec rest on each. Mostly just a set to work on form and build up my arms again. I added the backstroke because I am thinking about racing more backstroke next year. 1:06's are OK, but I think I can get down around 1:00 pretty easily if I put in some yards.

As usual, the first one felt pretty good. After than I was huffing and puffing. Hitting the wall between 1:45 and 1:50, even on the ones with 50 breast.

I like this set. I'm thinking of graduating up to the 200IM next year and I'm thinking this is a good first step towards increasing my IM training. -- the killer 200IM workout I tried last week is a bit advanced for me currently.

Cool Down:
250 EZ

4,800yds
1hr 20 min

Cross Training stuff:
I decided to sign up for a marathon yesterday. June 5 - North Olympic Discovery Marathon. It's a point-to-point marathon from Sequim to Port Angeles, WA. I was all set to go for the half-marathon, but my race schedule is blank from mid-May to mid-July so I decided to go for the full marathon.

So now I'm on a pretty tight schedule to get my running miles up. 5-6 miles this afternoon & about 15 miles tomorrow morning. I'm going to try to keep swimming between 15 and 20,000yds/wk, too.

Well, my arms felt a little better today. I didn't swim yesterday & just went for an 8 mile run. The sun finally came out for a while so I got to scrape a layer of winter grime off the car and get the lawn mowed.

I thought about taking another day off from swimming, but I need to do some sort of exercise each day and the weather was back to rainy & 40 degrees this morning. Not pleasant running or cycling weather, so I grabbed my bag and headed to the pool for some easy yards.

I kind of made up this workout. I knew I wanted a decent number of yards, but I wasn't in the mood for pushing hard.

About halfway through the 100's I started feeling OK and decided to do some 300's instead of the 200's I'd been thinking about. Pretty much garbage yards anyway, but I don't have any meets scheduled for quite a while, so I figured I might as well go back to low-intensity aerobic training.

Quite a bit of variety this morning. My shoulders were a bit tired from Thursday's short, IM workout. So I didn't swim as fast as I should have. A good workout.

Run: 3.6 miles 7:20/mi paceWts: 45min

Sat, Apr 16
Run: 7 miles 7:45/mi pace

Sun, Apr 17
Early morning to head over to Bainbridge Island to run a half-marathon with my swimming buddy Dan U. 9:00am race and we had a choice of a 6:10 or 7:55 ferry. Either be really early or rushed to get to the starting line. We decided to be early and get a quiet bite to eat at a bakery near the starting line.

It was a nice morning, no pouring rain and not too cold. By the time we finished breakfast, the sun had broken through the clouds and the temperature had risen to the mid 40's. It was the nicest race start so far this year.

The good weather held throughout the race and I had a good run. There were several good sized climbs during this race - 3 over 6% grade between 0.5 and 1.0 miles long. But I was using this race to experiment with pacing and nutrition so the hills were just another chance to work on my race strategies.

1:38:07 - 7:30/mi pace

Mon Apr 17
Solo swim at the local Y
I'd hoped to put in about 5,000yds today to work on some mid-distance sets and make up some ground on my GTD log. Two days out of the water and a long run on Sunday killed that plan. I discovered an impingement in my right shoulder and my legs turned to rubber after about 1,000yds. I did some short stroke drills and called it a day.

It was ugly. No smoothness today at all. My recovery was painful and was filled with pauses. Towards the end I was starting to get some smoothness back, but not enough to swim well or even attempt butterfly. It's a bit frustrating. I'll try ice and some stretching today. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to do some decent swimming.

Since today was IM day, I thought I'd try an IM pyramid I found here at the website.

Warm up (500):
500 swim - every fourth length backstroke

Drill(500):
100 - Swim breaststroke -- "ride the glide"
250 - Swim w/Breaststroke fins - work on timing & strong kick
150 - Swim breaststroke - work on DPS
Main Set (900):
25 fly @ :25
50 fly @ :50
50 fly/25 ba @ 1:15
50 fly/50 ba @ 1:40
(etc.)
200 IM @ 3:20
At this point I was supposed to take a 1 minute break and then do this again in reverse. I decided to do a little recovery swim instead.

Easy stuff (200):
4x50 pull @ :50 - alternate backstroke, freestyle
And here's where the swim instructor told me that I needed to clear out in a couple minutes so she could start swim lessons. I thought I'd try to squeeze in a few fast 25's before I got the boot, though.

Sprints(50):
2x25 @ :30 fly, back
And got booted out.

2,150yds
40 minutes

I suppose I should be a little bummed that I had to cut my workout short, but that IM set wiped me out! It really pointed out why I need to do more non-freestyle work, that's for sure. Only 2,150yds, but I got worked pretty hard. 375 yds of butterfly in a 900yd set was a lot for me.

Recovery:
300 pull w/ tube*, no paddles(* - I was at the hardware store yesterday and saw a wheelbarrow inner tube and since my son and another triathlete I know have trouble getting their legs up, I decided to go "oldschool" and pick up an inner tube. Of course, I needed to try it out to make sure it was going to work the way I remembered it working for me back in the early '80's)

Kick set 2:
4x(100kick @ 1:45 AFAP, 25kick @ :45)
I was surprised when I hit the first one at 1:33. I followed it up with a 1:30, 1:31 and 1:30(fly) - not bad since I've been a lazy kicker this season.

Yes, I did watch That Guy's 200fly and thought things were a bit off as I saw his splits. (being the hermit I am I didn't actually walk the length of the pool to talk to him, though) I was taking notes during the 100 back because I'm starting to think I might have a shot at breaking 1:00 in this race if I actually start training some backstroke.

Another beautiful day at the indoor pool -- no sunburn here! Although I did get a bit of a "burn" when I took my "missed walls cost me 3 seconds on my 200" speech on my older brothers' swim coach (from the 1970's) He says "3 seconds? More like 5! Probably more!!! c'mon!!" -- I'm pretty sure he saw that for the load of cr*p it really is.

Anyway, on to the races..

500 free - 5:31.07
13+ seconds faster than the last time I swam it. I went out in a 1:02 and decided to cruise for 300yds to save my legs for the last 100. I think I should have set the cruise control a little faster because I had plenty left at the end and missed my goal time by a couple of seconds. (nailed the walls today, though!) It was still good enough to get me a Nat. Q time for the 45-49 Age Group, assuming they don't go down significantly as a result of the screamin' fast times to be posted at the end of the month....

100 back - 1:06.28
2.85 seconds faster than last month. A pretty good swim. This was about 5 minutes after the 500, but it felt OK and I finished thinking that I should have been able to go faster. Time to start working on improving my turnover and getting more SDK's off the wall.

100 free - :54.71
Finally, finally, FINALLY I got under :55. And yes, I had a couple of crappy turns.

My reward? "Nice swim" from That Guy

:55 was a goal last year and I was close to getting there until I pulled just about every muscle on my right side and had to take the whole summer off to rehab. I finally got back to :57's in February but thought that was pretty slow and almost gave up on the swim season to focus on training for a marathon.

But it turns out I don't enjoy running in the rain, so I went back to the pool and started hitting the intervals harder and doing more sprints. So to the folks who encouraged me to stick with the swim season, "Thanks!"

200IM - 2:23.99
If it hasn't been obvious before, let me be clear - I are a freestyler.

So a 2:23.99 is pretty good for me and this swim was 9.85 seconds faster than the one I swam in February.

Out in :30.30, which was a surprise because I really was swimming "smooth" trying to save energy for the backstroke leg which was a

:36.01 and not what I was planning. I followed that up with a :46.44 breaststroke
and a :31.51 free. So not great splits, but like I said, I are a freestyler, so anything under 2:30.00 I was willing to be happy with.

Relays -- really at this point, after 2 days these were just for fun. Mixed medley & men's 200fr. Decent split for the backstroke leg of the medley (31.80) but not what I thought I could do & I didn't stick around to see what my anchor leg 50fr split was - it felt like a high 25, but I thought yesterdays was a :24.xx, so my judgement's a bit off.

It was a great meet and I enjoyed watching the forumites swim and cheering on my teammates from the Monroe Y Masters. Shattering my season times was nice, too and I'm sorry to end my season so early. I'm looking forward to a summer of maintaining some of the speed I found this winter and starting off the 2011-12 season with some times close to what I swam this weekend.

A decent day of swimming. I put together a 2-week taper (66%, 50% volume) and decided to end my season with a shave, swim cap and tech suit.

I enjoy the King County Aquatic Center pool. When I got in this morning, I felt FAST. I almost cut my warmup short at 200yds because I didn't want to jinx the feeling by staying in too long. But I decided to stick with it and I even did a sprint off the blocks during warm up (I usually don't because of the lines, but decided to do it today to make sure I wouldn't have any issues with the cap & goggles combo)

200fr - 2:00.25...2.69 seconds faster than last month's effort

I was shooting for 1:57.00, but on the first turn I flipped too far from the wall and had to burn a lot of energy getting back up to speed. (a recurring theme for me, it seems) and then, to top it off, I misjudged the same wall 2 more times. Yep, 3 of 4 turns at the far end of the pool were just plain awful.
So really, I swam very well, considering all the mental mistakes.

100IM - 1:05.13..2.29 seconds faster than last month

The taper showed itself here - I went out under :30 for the first time and managed to improve my breaststroke time a bit.
I'm very happy with this swim - it may be a long ways from "fast," but it gives me hope that I might get close to that neighborhood someday.

50ba (relay) :31.41..1.79seconds faster than last month

I'll take it. I worked on my starts a bit the past couple of weeks and the taper helped a lot.

50fr (relay) :25.32..0.66seconds faster than last month

A lot of time dropped for a 50, but not as much as I had hoped with the shave & taper and the leaning relay start.

Not a bad first day. No NQT's, in my current AG or next years', so I failed in my quest for the day, but significant improvements to my Masters' swim times.

Like I said, I was feeling sluggish today, but I was very happy with the 500 time. I swam the 500 at Juanita a few weeks back and only got a 5:44, so 5:50 from a push, sharing a lane with 2 people, and wearing a drag suit was a good time for me. Of course, now I'm feeling a little guilty about the seed time I put for the 500 at PNA zones in a couple weeks, but I'll get over it.

Later:
I was going to be near another pool around the time of their masters workout, so decided to stop by for their practice. I was hoping for some sprint work from the blocks, but they were just doing some light drillwork - at least I got to use the blocks to work on my backstroke start. It still needs work, but, like my breaststroke, it's not going to get any better if I don't keep trying.